NASA’s James Hansen’s big cherry pick

A new statistical analysis by NASA scientists has found that Earth’s land areas have become much more likely to experience an extreme summer heat wave than they were in the middle of the 20th century. The research was published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Earth’s Northern Hemisphere over the past 30 years has seen more “hot” (orange), “very hot” (red) and “extremely hot” (brown) summers, compared to a base period defined in this study from 1951 to 1980. This visualization shows how the area experiencing “extremely hot” summers grows from nearly nonexistent during the base period to cover 12 percent of land in the Northern Hemisphere by 2011. Watch for the 2010 heat waves in Texas, Oklahoma and Mexico, or the 2011 heat waves the Middle East, Western Asia and Eastern Europe. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio› Download hi-res visualization

Anthony comments on the NASA animation by Dr. James Hansen of surface temperature trends from 1955-1999:

There are many issues with this presentation. It seems to be a big Cherry Picking exercise.

1. Note all of the missing southern hemisphere data. There are operating weather stations during his time, but they are excluded from the analysis. Why?

2. The period chosen, 1955-1999 (in the bell curve animation) leaves out the warmer 1930’s and the cooler 2000’s. Why?

3. The period from 2000-present has no statistically significant warming. Leaving that period out (of the bell curve animation) biases the presentation.

4. The period chosen exhibits significant postwar growth, urbanization is not considered.

6. My latest results in Watts et al 2012 suggest surface station data may be biased warmer over the last 30 years.

The statistics show that the recent bouts of extremely warm summers, including the intense heat wave afflicting the U.S. Midwest this year, very likely are the consequence of global warming, according to lead author James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York.

“This summer people are seeing extreme heat and agricultural impacts,” Hansen says. “We’re asserting that this is causally connected to global warming, and in this paper we present the scientific evidence for that.”

Hansen and colleagues analyzed mean summer temperatures since 1951 and showed that the odds have increased in recent decades for what they define as “hot,” “very hot” and “extremely hot” summers.

The researchers detailed how “extremely hot” summers are becoming far more routine. “Extremely hot” is defined as a mean summer temperature experienced by less than one percent of Earth’s land area between 1951 and 1980, the base period for this study. But since 2006, about 10 percent of land area across the Northern Hemisphere has experienced these temperatures each summer.

James Hansen and colleagues use the bell curve to show the growing frequency of extreme summer temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere, compared to the 1951 to 1980 base period. The mean temperature for the base period is centered at the top of the green curve, while hotter than normal temperatures (red) are plotted to theright and colder than normal (blue) to the left. By 1981, the curve begins to shift noticeably to the right, showing how hotter summers are the new normal. The curve also widens, due to more frequent hot events. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio› Download hi-res visualization

Comments from Anthony:

This bell curve proves nothing, as it has the same problems with data as the surface temperature visualization above: cherry picking period, missing data, and contradictory severe weather statistics. This is nothing but a political ploy from a man who has abandoned any pretext of professionally done science in favor of activism. However, in spite of this, it will be used as “proof” by non-thinking individuals like Bill McKibben to promote a political end. Prepare for a barrage of such stories trying to link any observed weather aberration to climate. They’ll use the same level of fact checking like we saw with the melting street lamps last week.

In 1988, Hansen first asserted that global warming would reach a point in the coming decades when the connection to extreme events would become more apparent. While some warming should coincide with a noticeable boost in extreme events, the natural variability in climate and weather can be so large as to disguise the trend.

To distinguish the trend from natural variability, Hansen and colleagues turned to statistics. In this study, the GISS team including Makiko Sato and Reto Ruedy did not focus on the causes of temperature change. Instead the researchers analyzed surface temperature data to establish the growing frequency of extreme heat events in the past 30 years, a period in which the temperature data show an overall warming trend.

NASA climatologists have long collected data on global temperature anomalies, which describe how much warming or cooling regions of the world have experienced when compared with the 1951 to 1980 base period. In this study, the researchers employ a bell curve to illustrate how those anomalies are changing.

A bell curve is a tool frequently used by statisticians and society. School teachers who grade “on the curve” use a bell curve to designate the mean score as a C, the top of the bell. The curve falls off equally to both sides, showing that fewer students receive B and D grades and even fewer receive A and F grades.

Hansen and colleagues found that a bell curve was a good fit to summertime temperature anomalies for the base period of relatively stable climate from 1951 to 1980. Mean temperature is centered at the top of the bell curve. Decreasing in frequency to the left of center are “cold,” “very cold” and “extremely cold” events. Decreasing in frequency to the right of center are “hot,” “very hot” and “extremely hot” events.

Plotting bell curves for the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, the team noticed the entire curve shifted to the right, meaning that more hot events are the new normal. The curve also flattened and widened, indicating a wider range of variability. Specifically, an average of 75 percent of land area across Earth experienced summers in the “hot” category during the past decade, compared to only 33 percent during the 1951 to 1980 base period. Widening of the curve also led to the designation of the new category of outlier events labeled “extremely hot,” which were almost nonexistent in the base period.

Hansen says this summer is shaping up to fall into the new extreme category. “Such anomalies were infrequent in the climate prior to the warming of the past 30 years, so statistics let us say with a high degree of confidence that we would not have had such an extreme anomaly this summer in the absence of global warming,” he says.

Other regions around the world also have felt the heat of global warming, according to the study. Global maps of temperature anomalies show that heat waves in Texas, Oklahoma and Mexico in 2011, and in the Middle East, Western Asia and Eastern Europe in 2010 fall into the new “extremely hot” category.

You know, there have been a spate of papers to prove the warming alarm via statistics.

It’s time to use the same technique to show that GISS and CRU adjustments are also far from what can be expected by normal, random, unbiased forces and thus their warming signal is conclusively “man-made”.

Waiting for James’ reply,……cue Jeopardy music. Great article Anthony. So sick of their “selective science”. How will Hansen be viewed by his peers in the future? Perhaps as one of the men who derailed science for political machinations (the cause).

“James E. Hansen: “When I testified before the Senate in the hot summer of 1988 , I warned of the kind of future that climate change would bring to us and our planet. I painted a grim picture of the consequences of steadily increasing temperatures, driven by mankind’s use of fossil fuels.”

If global temperatures are increasing over a time interval, it is out of the methods of science to predict global temperatures for the future without the knowledge of the physical mechanism of increasing or decreasing global temperatures. Each disregard of this limit of physics is not a method of science and/or a fallacious argument, which includes in the case of an authority the fallacy Argumentum ad verecundiam (Appeal to authority). ‘The Appeal to Authority uses admiration of a famous person to try and win support for an assertion.’.

Independent from this argument it needs not much logic to conclude that with increased global temperatures the processes driven by a higher heat must change in its effects. It seems to be intelligent to take the consequences in the adaptability as humans ever have done.

A further disregard of the methods of science is to take the old fashion dept phantom, people have controlled by kings, religions, and governments for many millennia, and mix it into a prediction of an authority, without any valid scientific argument.

In a new analysis of the past six decades of global temperatures, which will be published Monday, my colleagues and I have revealed a stunning increase in the frequency of extremely hot summers, with deeply troubling ramifications for not only our future but also for our present.

To understand the nature of global temperatures it is necessary and possible to analyse the reconstructed and measured temperatures for the time interval of about 1 million years or for the time interval of about 10 ky to present. This is inalienable because a supposed linear increased temperature of 6 decades can be a phase of a oscillating function of centuries or millennia. From this it is not possible to extrapolate time interval of temperature into the future.

This is not a climate model or a prediction but actual observations of weather events and temperatures that have happened.

No Sir. You do say two times a word on prediction and future.

Our analysis shows that it is no longer enough to say that global warming will increase the likelihood of extreme weather and to repeat the caveat that no individual weather event can be directly linked to climate change.

No Sir. Your analysis shows simple that you think there is an connection between high global temperatures and effects from that level. But that is not a new recognition. That’s what wrong is, that your analyse shell show that ‘global warming will increase’ something, because this suggests a knowledge about the future, but this is not analysed.

our analysis shows that, for the extreme hot weather of the recent past, there is virtually no explanation other than climate change.

That is not the point in climate science. The point in climate science is to explain the cause for the analysable global temperature periods from many kiloyears to month. Periods which are well known since Bond have analysed the frequencies after Fourier’s method with an example of about 1 period per 1800 years. But it seems that there are 2 periods in 1800 years, and the temperature reconstruction from Zorita et al. fit with Bond’s data. There are 13 increasing temperature phases over 11.000 years but as you can see, there are also phases of decreasing temperatures after high global temperature levels
:

This may show that an analysis of your chosen time interval of 6 decades with an increasing phase is not useful to make predictions to the future. You cannot rule out from the scientific point of view that the natural period of 1800 years, or better 900 years, occurs in a new decreasing phase of the global temperature.

To whom it may concern, analysed solar tides can be simulated from 3000 BC until 3000 CE. The pattern of some solar tide functions indicate, it fits with Bond et al. and Zorita et al. and lower temperatures in the next decades to 2040 CE..

I’m a bit jealous of you over in North America with your excellent summer, over here in Scandinavia it’s the coldest and wettest summer in many many years. There is also a very interesting phenomenon occurring this year in that the northern parts of Scandinavia and areas 1000m above sea level will miss this summer completely, in meteorological terms that is (temperatures of more than 10 degrees C for more then five days).

[joke]I have an idea for where all this excess heat is coming from. It comes from Trofim Lysenko spinning in his grave at 3600 RPM at an abuse of science that makes his life’s work look trivial by comparison.[/joke]

Jim Hansen is assuming that 1951-1980 defines the full range of natural climate variability. That’s the same mistaken assumption he used in 1988 to assert his 99% certainty that human-caused global warming was already apparent.

Statistics can only tell one whether one set of numbers is like another, or not. It can’t say anything about whether some weather vagaries during historical period are within natural climate variability or not. That distinction takes a viable physical theory of climate. That theory does not exist.

Jim Hansen’s analysis and conclusion are entirely pseudoscience. I’m not surprised it was published in Ralph Ciccerone’s PNAS.

For this kind of exercise to make sense either 1) The set of stations whose data they are looking at needs to be constant throughout the entire analysis period; or 2) The set of observations in each years needs to be an independent random sample out of all possible locations. I am pretty sure (1) is not true. I am also pretty sure (2) CANNOT be true (see )

As such, this pretty animation cannot show anything other than the fact that the distribution of temperatures at the stations whose data continue to make it into the data set shifted right.

The period chosen, 1955-1999 leaves out the warmer 1930’s and the cooler 2000’s. Why?

The period from 2000-present has no statistically significant warming. Leaving that period out biases the presentation.

Well, it might help if you actually watched the animation. It shows 1955, 1965, 1975 and then 1985-2011. The 1930s were warmer in the US, not the whole NH, and the 2000’s were by no stretch of the imagination ‘cooler’.

4. The period chosen exhibits significant postwar growth, urbanization is not considered.

No factors are ‘considered’ this is just a map of recorded temperatures. However according to Richard Muller “I think the conclusion that urban heat islands contribute essentially zero to the warming we see is on very solid ground.”

The propaganda/lies from the Climate Liars is becoming more outlandish and desperate each day. They’ve given up the pretext of even doing phoney science, now it’s science fiction science. The only reason this scam has gone on as long as it has is the lamestream media is fronting fools like Hansen/NASA. If MSM journailism has an ounce of integerity left, Hansen would be outted as the Kook he is within days, but since the MSM supports Hansen’s political agenda, the climate lies will continue ad nauseum until the next ice age.

Obviously, he doesn’t leave out the 2000’s (Watts’ points 2 and 3 are not correct). The whole point is that the 2003 Europe, 2010 Russia and 2011 Texas show up well in this animation. Why would he leave those out when they make his main point for him? Read the captions.

It is all we’ll get from them, because that is all they’ve got, because it isn’t warming and they know it.

They have a limited amount of time to try to get their political lock in place, before the lack of warming vs their models becomes untenable to the majority of scientists who are not personally invested in their oversold conjecture. They know that too, so expect the frequency and stridency of these opportunistic shenanigens increase.

REPLY: Well John Sully, if the press release can’t stand on its own, then it needs to be revised. I wonder if the writer of that read the paper, especially since there’s no link to it? That’s what the public sees, that’s what I’m reacting to. And I’m the one who looks like a fool?

Andreas says:
August 6, 2012 at 10:49 am
I’m a bit jealous of you over in North America with your excellent summer, over here in Scandinavia it’s the coldest and wettest summer in many many years. There is also a very interesting phenomenon occurring this year in that the northern parts of Scandinavia and areas 1000m above sea level will miss this summer completely, in meteorological terms that is (temperatures of more than 10 degrees C for more then five days).

Here in the MidWest this summer, we’re having heat like when I lived in Las Vegas. But the worst part is the accompanying drought.

”Effects on the global temperature of large increases in carbon dioxide and aerosol densities in the atmosphere of Earth have been computed. It is found that, although the addition of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does increase the surface temperature, the rate of temperature increase diminishes with increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. .. S. I. Rasool, S. H. Schneider
”

Cute, Jimmy. Take a well-known 66-year cycle, and look only at the latter half of the cycle. While you’re at it, why don’t you model a typical day by starting at noon and ending at midnight. You’ll conclude that it’s GETTING DARKER AND DARKER AND DARKER!!!!! WE’LL NEVER HAVE LIGHT AGAIN! IT’S ALL OUR FAULT! WE MUST ALL DIE!

I’ve decided that the only solution is to apply the same principle to funding. Extrapolate from a part to the whole. Climate science is crazy, therefore all science is crazy. Therefore we should stop funding ALL SCIENCE, including medical research.

That’s the only way we’ll get the honest scientists (if there are any, which I’m no longer sure about) to disown the climate criminals.

They also assume that any trend in heat waves / extreme weather etc… is directly caused by co2 levels but provide no physical mechanism for this and exclude/ignore hundreds of other potential factors. Even is droughts were getting more frequent, it could be due another cuase, for example changes in ocean currents etc… cherry picked and extremely week, the AGW crowd will jump straight onto this, its their kind of science i.e. it reafirms their beliefs like a christian who finds a piece of wood in the desert confirming Noah was there

Using Hanson scientific methods, calculations, cherry picking and models. NASA would never have landed on the moon or accomplished a brilliant Mars landing last night. Hanson and his warmist cabal are a disgrace to real world scientist’s and engineers. Witchcraft/voodoo so called climate experts does not come close to real world scientific professionals, they have to achieve workable and provable results or they are sent to the back or the bus.
Congratulations to the real NASA!
Now please fire Hanson so he can get a job a Greenpeace, stopping the Coal death trains -LOL

Back in my days in the creationist wars, I used to see probability arguments like this:

It follows that we can state, with a high degree of confidence, that extreme anomalies such as those in Texas and Oklahoma in 2011 and Moscow in 2010 were a consequence of global warming because their likelihood in the absence of global warming was exceedingly small.

used as proof that God HAD to have created life on Earth.

Now I don’t mean to get that particular kerfuffle started in here; however I find it highly significant that climate science has reached the point of using probability as evidence.

One of the observational records employed in the GISS analysis is the
Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) data set for surface air temperature
at meteorological stations, which is maintained by the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Climatic Data
Center (NCDC). We use version 2 (GHCNv2) of this data record …

Back in my days in the creationist wars, I used to see probability arguments like this:

It follows that we can state, with a high degree of confidence, that extreme anomalies such as those in Texas and Oklahoma in 2011 and Moscow in 2010 were a consequence of global warming because their likelihood in the absence of global warming was exceedingly small.

used as proof that God HAD to have created life on Earth.

Now I don’t mean to get that particular kerfuffle started in here; however I find it highly significant that climate science has reached the point of using probability as evidence.

Ridicule is the answer to nonsense. This is why WUWT is as popular as it is.

Expose the shortcomings (like cherry-picking and lies of omission) and ridicule the perpetrator.
i.e.: Any REAL climatologist would know the 30’s had more heat waves. (see Christy)

I just wish the message could be taken to a broader audience, like the buzz the hide the decline video got; for Hansen something like a hide the cycle video or a I’ll break the law for the cause so imagine what I’ll do to the data video.

Now I don’t mean to get that particular kerfuffle started in here; however I find it highly significant that climate science has reached the point of using probability as evidence.

Not surprising. The whole CAGW playbook is stolen from medieval theocrats, and this paper is a fine example:

1) Pick a cyclic natural phenomenon.

2) Fiddle with the knowledge base to exaggerate the appearance of the cycle.

3) Draw comparison between the current peak and the most recent trough, highlighting bad effects only.

4) Blame the peak on your political opponents.

5) Demand power to appease the god(s).

Blame crop failures on witches or on people who use fossil fuel. Both are excellent ways to get a crowd of pitchfork weilding followers to raise you up, blame themselves for the world’s ills, and sacrifice their neighbors in atonement.

Pat Frank says:
August 6, 2012 at 10:58 am
“Jim Hansen is assuming that 1951-1980 defines the full range of natural climate variability. That’s the same mistaken assumption he used in 1988 to assert his 99% certainty that human-caused global warming was already apparent.”

Very well said. Your emphasis is important. Write an article on Hansen’s theory of natural variability.

Phil Clarke says:
August 6, 2012 at 11:30 am
The period chosen, 1955-1999 leaves out the warmer 1930′s and the cooler 2000′s. Why?

The period from 2000-present has no statistically significant warming. Leaving that period out biases the presentation.

“Well, it might help if you actually watched the animation. It shows 1955, 1965, 1975 and then 1985-2011. The 1930s were warmer in the US, not the whole NH, and the 2000′s were by no stretch of the imagination ‘cooler’.”

I’ve been noticing a trend on the site in general to promote the idea that AGW is a dying meme. I really recommend that frequent readers and posters pay a visit to the Huffington Post

Check out any topic dealing with GW, the comments are usually in the thousands per post, and the vast majority of them at the moment consist on congratulating themselves for being so clever, and chiding the right wing loonies for being so stupid as to doubt GW. Now I can only seem to access the Canadian version of the Huff, but I assume the American version is the same.

It is a real wake up call to check out the other side and see not a shred of doubt. Also a bit disheartening to see next to no posters making intelligent arguments for the skeptical side. Allmost without question they are trolls that would get banned from posting here.

Maybe that is on purpose and the thoughtful and considered posters are getting deleted?

What ever the case may be it is certainly an eye opener to be confronted with so much concentrated certainty.

Peter, while I tend to agree with the general public perception, the fact is that things are not going the way the alarmist crowd would like. They are steadily losing adherents, as people start to realize that you can only say “The sky is falling!” for so long before they realize it was just an acorn hitting Chicken Little on the head.

I still don’t get why an arbitrary time point is used in climate science. What makes 1951-1980 average so important. Why not use 1900 to 2010 ? Or 1980 to 2010 ? Why use a thirty year average ? Why not ten ?

The use of comparison to an average is also really irritating.

The mathematical construct of an average by definition means you will always gets temps above and below it.

I think I understand the implications of the chosen baseline period. I wonder what would the bell curve of a period prior to the base period (like 1930-1960) look like? Would that bell curve shift to the right of the baseline period and therefore be due to global warming because it has a “…likelihood in the absence of global warming that is exceedingly small”?

Need a demonstrative and succinct explication of how Hansen – an avowed activitist and on record saying the message needs to hit harder and then hitting harder – gets a relationship to climate in contrast to other climate scientists of both camps and meterologists.. Pretty sure the clues are in the noted cherry-picked base period, selective recent measurements and invalid inferred assumptions about those measurements. Still the differences between Hansen’s analysis and others’ would be instructive, probably helpful in identifying all the biases and persuasve.

Still within natural cyclical variability ? Cause? Reasons for expectations of continuation of the claimed weather trend contained within this study? (I’d say the study with a base of 1951 to 1980 is the only relevant data in the analysis and demonstrates that climate and weather both shift inexplicably). The guy is less than subtly stating that small warming produces weather that is extreme and that will get more extreme and for an ever increasing area of the globe. That’s a lot of concluding contrary to reality based on fitted data.

I forgot to mention, the increase in the summer temperature anomalies is only in the northern hemisphere ex-tropics. Not only are greenhouses gases not the cause, the cause isn’t a global effect. Likeliest cause is decreased anthropogenic aerosols.

Independent of the merits here, a bit of ‘war tested’ advice. Pick you battles, and win them. You cannot win every battle/skirmish. Stop trying, since your opponents use your own ‘weak’ forays against you. I have little skin in, since have published one book with another coming showing that ‘we are barking up the wrong tree’. But to the extent you all are right, get the strategy and tactics right in order to win world opinion.

Phil Clarke says:
August 6, 2012 at 11:30 am
The period chosen, 1955-1999 leaves out the warmer 1930′s and the cooler 2000′s. Why?

The period from 2000-present has no statistically significant warming. Leaving that period out biases the presentation.

Well, it might help if you actually watched the animation. It shows 1955, 1965, 1975 and then 1985-2011. The 1930s were warmer in the US, not the whole NH, and the 2000′s were by no stretch of the imagination ‘cooler’.

Phil

Have you compared the temperatures back to the start of the Holocene? We are currently in a cold period with a continual trend down from the Holocene optimum. There are many periods where temperatures rose and fell far more sharply than they have done in the last 100 years – before anyone was pumping an extra 2 – 3% CO2 into the atmosphere. Yet you feel there should be alarm about the current period to the extent that it becomes THE threat above all others that mankind should face? More than famine, more than disease, more than poverty that are actually killing huge numbers of people NOW. Yet a completely unexceptional variance in climate that is still far cooler than the current interglacial average is cause for concern? Why?

Why does anyone even bother discussing Hansen, et al anymore? He’s yesterday’s freak show. C’mon folks, find something to talk about that’s more interesting than beating this dead horse. The header for this site is far more inclusive than just the latest bullshit from the likes of Hansen. It’s getting really boring.

Sorry, the site address quoted in the paper is: http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/
PerceptionsAndDice/ , but the address given above is where the link took me. At a quick glance the two sites appear to be the same. The data is GISS version 2 (GHCNv2).

@Curiousgeorge:Why does anyone even bother discussing Hansen, et al anymore? He’s yesterday’s freak show. C’mon folks, find something to talk about that’s more interesting than beating this dead horse. The header for this site is far more inclusive than just the latest bullshit from the likes of Hansen. It’s getting really boring.

AndyG55 says:
August 6, 2012 at 4:16 pm
A wonder how many of the CAGW bletheren realise that the REAL DANGER comes if they are wrong, and people like Easterbrook are right.

A drop into a cold period, with the current world wide state of energy supply systems, crushed by the alternative energy agenda, will have devastating consequences.

CO2 is GOOD… Warmer is GOOD… Colder is VERY BAD !!!!!!!!!!!!!

You are right Andy – that is why the name for the warmer periods is ‘Optima’. Unfortunately, the excitable Hansen and the ignorant Nobel prize winning Gore need to frighten the ignorant into sending more money and ceding more control. Even when you point out that NONE of the prophecies of doom have occurred, the faithful remain convinced in their cognitive dissonance. One wonders how long it will take for them to accept that they have been fooled. As I have said in another place – there are people who as they watch the Mississippi glacier calve into the frozen wastes of the Gulf of Mexico will be saying – “You wait – when this lot melts it’s going to get dangerously warm!!”

The only reason Paul Ehrlich’s population bomb did not occur was the rapid increase in agricultural output, “deserts turning green”, helped by advanced agriculture and almost certainly by increased CO2 in the atmosphere. If it gets colder and the food grow-line moves only 200 miles south – then Ehrlich’s population bomb will explode. It will NOT be nice. Do not be close to a large Northern hemisphere city when the food shortages hit, supermarkets only hold 3 days food.

If cold weather records were being increasingly broken on the world’s land masses would we hear from Dr. James Hansen that cold weather events will increasingly occur??? Of course not. Hansen is an activist with an agenda and flies to exotic locations to spew out hot air and gets paid handsomely for it. Why is Hansen not embarrassed about his 1988 piece of speculation that has spectacularly failed?

Nasa did a fine job recently with the perfect landing of the new Mars rover. They are doing a bad job keeping an activist scientist within their employment.

I noticed they decided to exclude Greenland from the study (apparently not in the Northern Hemisphere anymore — must have got voted out).

How incredibly freeing it must be to a Climate Scientist — you get to pick your “base period” and which countries to include\exclude, you even get to create your own scientific terms like: “Extremely Hot”, based on criteria you just made up. Frankly, I would have chosen more colorful terms like: “El Scorcho”, “Inferno”, or “Bloody Hot.”

And the MSM lapped it up and spewed wildly. I’m about ready to pack it in and become a drunken backwoods hillbilly or desert rat. Chuck it all, say goodbye to the madness as I hermit away in my declining years.

Questions. In the years since that infamous Senate hearing, didn’t Hansen admit that he and his associates were responsible for having the Senate air conditioning off (and the windows closed) on that fateful Senate hearing day, in order to better drive home the message of ‘warming’? Isn’t this study of his just more sly subterfuge of the same wink wink nudge nudge sort? What exactly is this man good at, besides subterfuge and selling a politically motivated view? Most importantly, how does he keep his job at NASA? The man seems a proper fool, or takes his masters for one. What is up with that?

[REPLY: No, it was Senator Tim Wirth who made that admission, and to the best of my knowledge did not implicate Dr. Hansen. -REP]

Is Hansen really finding more ‘hot spots’ in the (already adjusted upwards) temperature record? Or is he simply confirming an already warmed up – and minorly warming – temperature record? This is the key question here. You believe the first; others claim the second.

It’s so nice to see that Hansen’s paper is not behind a pay wall… Thank you Rattus.

“The climate dice are now loaded to a degree that a perceptive
person old enough to remember the climate of 1951–1980 should
recognize the existence of climate change, especially in summer.”

AND

“It is not uncommon for meteorologists to reject global warming
as a cause of these extreme events, offering instead a meteorological
explanation. For example, it is said that the Moscow heat
wave was caused by an extreme atmospheric “blocking” situation,
or the Texas heat wave was caused by La Niña ocean temperature
patterns. Certainly the locations of extreme anomalies in any
given case depend on specific weather patterns. However, blocking
patterns and La Niñas have always been common, yet the
large areas of extreme warming have come into existence only
with large global warming.”

Facts from “Dynamic Analysis of Weather and Climate” by Marcel Leroux, 2ed. Springer 2010:
Figure 14.28 page 364, Annual mean pressure Toulouse, Marseille-Marignane and Perpignan (rising), Figure 14.29 Bavaria Germany (rising), Figure 14.32 Clermont-Ferrand (Centre of France) for JJA (rising) and Figure 14.33, rising frequency of MPHs reaching France during JJA.
So Hansen sees larger anticyclonic agglutinations in summer and their correlative temperature rises that are fed by an increasing frequency of polar anticyclones that is all high pressure systems… And that is due to “large global warming”????

Let’s also mention that the very same occurs in winter as Moscow in 2011 experienced its colder winter in 100 years and South America is experiencing cold, clear winters hurting their populations. I guess brought by “large global warming” too… LOL

What’s amazing is Hansen’s utter gall in the face of so much proof he is quoting BS that he continues to do so and he even has media outlets that will publish it!
When will this guy just shut his pie hole and go golfing?

Certainly understandable being a drunken backwoods hillbilly myself, having suffered the letdown of the hoped European enlightenment progress into a New Age of Science, Wonderment and Lots of Free Stuff.

Welcome to Kali Yuga! Don’t go nihilistic at this point, you’ll end up in the lie business with the liars.

If they really want a study to see if warmer periods have gotten longer, pick a REALLY extreme period and location – Marble Bar, Australia.

The town set a world record of most consecutive days of maximum temperatures of 37.8 degrees Celsius (100 degrees Fahrenheit) or more, during a period of 160 such days from 31 October 1923 to 7 April 1924.

So when Hansen states that “…Such anomalies were infrequent in the climate prior to the warming of the past 30 years, so statistics let us say with a high degree of confidence that we would not have had such an extreme anomaly this summer in the absence of global warming…”, he needs to ask, how would the Russian heat wave of 2010 (during July and early August 2010) stack up against this record?

“…During December and January, temperatures in excess of 45 °C (113 °F) are common, and the average maximum temperature exceeds normal human body temperature for 6 months each year…”

Jan P Perlwitz, a NASA colleague of Hansen’s, has complained in the open weekend thread about the insults and vitriol hurled at Hansen and others by skeptics. I have challenged Jan P Perlwitz in that thread to make an appearance in this thread and to defend Hansen’s work. I’ve predicted that he will slink away in silence rather than make an appearance in this thread. He’d be faced with defending the indefensible and looking foolish in the process, or, he’d have to call a spade a space and suffer the wrath of his colleague. He’s got little choice but to slink away.

“As such, this pretty animation cannot show anything other than the fact that the distribution of temperatures at the stations whose data continue to make it into the data set shifted right.”

I see much significance in what you say, and I also liked your later linked graphic presentation on the “dying of Thermometers”. That in itself should provide a good basis for challenging anything based upon modern assumptions of the validity of reconstructed temperatures. And what delicious irony if Hansen’s “Bell Curve” graphic presentation is used and applied over historical temperature changes to illustrate how the historical record has been cooked. Kinda nice if the curve moves to the right (cooked for warming) and thinking moves with it, rather than all this leftist self promoted clap trap.
Hoisted on their own petard, comes to mind!

Waiting for James’ reply,……cue Jeopardy music. Great article Anthony. So sick of their “selective science”. How will Hansen be viewed by his peers in the future? Perhaps as one of the men who derailed science for political machinations (the cause).
____________________________–
If truth manages to win, Hansen, Jones, Trenberth and Mann will take their place along side Teilhard de Chardin, Martin A.C. Hinton, Charles Dawson and Arthur Woodward in history texts.

John West says:
August 6, 2012 at 1:33 pmRidicule is the answer to nonsense. This is why WUWT is as popular as it is.
Expose the shortcomings (like cherry-picking and lies of omission) and ridicule the perpetrator.
i.e.: Any REAL climatologist would know the 30’s had more heat waves. (see Christy)
I just wish the message could be taken to a broader audience, like the buzz the hide the decline video got; for Hansen something like a hide the cycle video or a I’ll break the law for the cause so imagine what I’ll do to the data video.

JW,
I agree! There’s something quite satisfying and lasting about defeating your enemies with humor. Hmmm… how to go about it though?

How about a ‘TwiLight Zone’ type video titled:
Post Normal Science From The Cherry Picking Zone!

A Rod Serling-esque narrator intones “Mr Whatsupwiththat was a quiet meteorologist from AnyStreet Chico CA, with no idea he was about to encounter a region of post normal science where light turns into color…. and color turns into The Cherry Picking Zone!”

Scene opens with 2 ‘scientists’ (one that looks suspiciously like Mike Mann) standing in front of a large bowl of ripe cherries, which the MM character is eagerly devouring saying “I just LOVE fresh picked cherries, don’t you?” The MM character says excitedly “Hey! I think I’ve got final proof of man made global warming! Have a look at this!” Behind the cherry bowl is a large display of the bell curve shown above, that comes into focus as the camera leaves the bowl. He proceeds to demonstrate how to manipulate his bell curve and gleefully highlights the conclusions he draws from it, finally summarizing with “Yup! Man Made Global Warming! Right in line with The Consensus. Whaddaya think?”

The second scientist (looking amazingly like one of the WUWT 2012 et.al. team) says “I dunno, Mickey. How come you just used 1955 to 1999 data for the curve? And why did you use 1951 to 1980 data for the ‘base’ period? We have a lot more data available. Something looks funny here…. Tell ya what. I’m going to try a few other base periods for comparison. And then I’m going to use a data set from 1930 through 2010 for comparisons. Let’s see if the MMGW trend really holds up!”

It rapidly becomes obvious to both scientists (and our audience) that only those specific ‘cherry picked’ data sets and start/end points can produce the alarming graph of Mickey’s shame. The scene closes with Mickey holding his stomach in distress, by the almost empty cherry bowl. “I feel sick!” he says. “So do I!” says the WUWT scientist. “But you didn’t eat any of the cherries… It can’t be the cherries making you sick?!” says MM. “It isn’t the cherries, Mickey.” says the WUWT scientist “It’s the Cherry Picking that makes me ill!”

(scene fades out to the Rod Serling-esque disclaimer) “The story you have just scene is true. It provides a clear illustration of how statistics are used by consensus climatologists to willfully mislead our legislators and the public at large. The names have been changed to protect the folks who brought you this important message. Any resemblance to actual people is uninternational and strictly up to the whimsical interpretations of each viewer. The multiple interpretations of the data sets were all produced with out changing or ‘adjusting’ the original data, to better illustrate how statistics and selective ‘cherry picking’ of start and end points can be used to draw sharply differing conclusions from the same basic data. The story of ‘adjusting the data’ must wait for another day…. in another part of The Cherry Picking Zone!“

You all need to look at the bell curve animation much more carefully. The last picture is 2001-2011. All the data from the 2000’s is included. Why would Hansen leave off the years that show his point the best?? How can you participate in a discussion of the data when you cannot read the graph?

The data from the southern hemisphere is in the paper. The data is split up by months and the summer is the most interesting. Since that is winter in the Southern hemisphere the animation only shows the North. The Southern hemisphere data is similar to the data in the animation.

“The most basic matter is not one of economics, however. It is a matter of morality – a matter of intergenerational justice. As with the earlier great moral issue of slavery, an injustice done by one race of humans to another, so the injustice of one generation to all those to come must stir the public’s conscience to the point of action.”

“Can the human tipping point be reached before the climate system passes a point of no return? What we have shown in this paper is that time is rapidly running out. The era of doubts, delays and denial, of ineffectual half-measures, must end. The period of consequences is beginning. If we fail to stand up now and demand a change of course, the blame will fall on us, the current generation of adults. Our parents did not know that their actions could harm future generations. We will only be able to pretend that we did not know. And that is unforgiveable.”

Yes, you read that right (first paragraph) – Hansen just compared “ending” global warming to slavery! This is perhaps the most repulsive and repugnant statement I’ve ever seen a scientist make in printed media…

Please, read it all…and don’t be surprised when you start to see lawsuits based on the Hansen junk science, which cause your energy prices to “necessarily skyrocket” (to use phrase from our current president).

Greenhouse gas warming theory predicts nights warm faster than days, winter warms faster than summer. Hansen has produced clear evidence the observed warming is not due to greenhouse gases, because it predicts the least warming in summer days. Thus there should be less record hot days in summer than in winter. The decrease in record winter night time cold should greatly exceed record hot days in summer.

1. Note all of the missing southern hemisphere data. There are operating weather stations during his time, but they are excluded from the analysis. Why?

See Michael Sweet’s post.

2. The period chosen, 1955-1999 (in the bell curve animation) leaves out the warmer 1930′s and the cooler 2000′s. Why?

Globally, the 1930’s were at about the same temperature as the 1951-1980 period, and colder than the 2000’s, which were globally the hottest decade on record. Furthermore, the 2000s ARE taken into account in the paper, if not in the animation–and considering that the paper is available to you, it puzzles me as to why you’d expend energy criticizing the animation.

3. The period from 2000-present has no statistically significant warming. Leaving that period out (of the bell curve animation) biases the presentation.

The mentioned period is covered in the paper itself, and is also present in the animation.

4. The period chosen exhibits significant postwar growth, urbanization is not considered.

Urbanization is considered, actually, as the data used has already been adjusted and homogenized specifically in order to remove spurious temperature trends, including the UHI effect. I’m aware, mind, that you don’t think that those adjustments are done correctly; fair enough. I’m just pointing out that from Hansen’s perspective, he doesn’t NEED to take urbanization into account because it’s already been taken into account.

5. As for severe weather, Hansen ignores the fact that neither tornadoes nor hurricanes have shown any increase recently. Only smaller tornadoes show an increase, due to reporting bias thanks to easily affordable and accessible technology. NOAA’s SPC reports that July 2012 seems to be at a record low for tornadoes.

Hansen makes no specific claims regarding tornadoes or hurricanes in his paper, which deals primarily with departure of temperature from the mean, not with extreme weather. This “criticism” is irrelevant to this specific paper.

6. My latest results in Watts et al 2012 suggest surface station data may be biased warmer over the last 30 years.

Watts et al 2012, while no doubt representing a significant effort on your part and on the part of others (and, furthermore, very useful in that it updates your previous surfacestations classifications, bringing them up to currency with the standards introduced by Mennes et al 2009), does not take into account known biases in the temperature record and therefore, as is, says little to nothing about the actual global temperature trend. I eagerly await, though, your application of the necessary adjustments for station relocation, instrumental changes, and time of observation changes to the stations you’ve classified, at which point you should be able to actually say something defensible about what United States temperature trends are.

TomRude says:
August 6, 2012 at 6:29 pm
It’s so nice to see that Hansen’s paper is not behind a pay wall… Thank you Rattus.

“The climate dice are now loaded to a degree that a perceptive
person old enough to remember the climate of 1951–1980 should
recognize the existence of climate change, especially in summer.”
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Having been around to watch the heat, the floods, the storms, and the heavy snows and resultant devastation from rapid spring melts during that period in the area where I grew up, especially in the early 1960’s when asphalt was melting in the streets; and having my parents talk of ranching and farming through the 30’s, I can hardly get excited about our current weather as I have seen it all before. Nothing new here. Let’s move on ;-P

Hansen must be around my age so I can only conclude he is a Charlatan.

Sam Yates;
Globally, the 1930′s were at about the same temperature as the 1951-1980 period, and colder than the 2000′s, which were globally the hottest decade on record. Furthermore, the 2000s ARE taken into account in the paper, if not in the animation–and considering that the paper is available to you, it puzzles me as to why you’d expend energy criticizing the animation.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Oddly they were warmer for the longest time until adjustments made them colder than they originally were. Was there new temperature data obtained about the 1930’s in the last 20 years or so to justify this downward adjustment? No? Please explain.

As for the animation, so what you are saying is that it doesn’t represent the paper, than I’d like to know if you think that was a deliberate misrepresentation or not?

Sam Yates;
Globally, the 1930′s were at about the same temperature as the 1951-1980 period, and colder than the 2000′s, which were globally the hottest decade on record.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

All the more reason to include them. If heat waves similar to the current period happened in the supposedly cooler period, that would pretty much falsify the while paper wouldn’t it? How is it that all that time and effort went into the paper and yet excluded data on hand for a time period when historical references makes clear had extreme heat waves? In the era of computer simulations, how hard would it have been to include the extra few decades of data and compare heat waves then to heat waves now?

Leaving them out is inexcusable, and when one considers how easily they could have been included, one can only draw a negative inference from the fact that they were not.

Davidmhoffer: I’m not sure what you’re referring to; as far as I know, in no data sets, adjusted or otherwise, do global temperatures during the 1930s and 1940s compare with temperatures now. Are you talking about this US adjustment? http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/28/nasa-giss-adjustments-galore-rewriting-climate-history/ If so, it had little effect other than to shift a few records around, and the trend was left mostly as it was–and in any case, concluding that an adjustment is false because it results in warming, without even being familiar with why the adjustment is being performed, seems to me like it might get you into trouble. What are your reasons for believing that the adjustments aren’t valid?

As for your concerns about the time period used, Hansen et al defend that choice in their paper:

“We choose 1951–1980 as the base period for most of our illustrations, for several reasons. First, it was a time of relatively stable global temperature, prior to rapid global warming in recent decades. Second, it is recent enough for older people, especially the “baby boom” generation, to remember. Third, global temperature in 1951–1980 was within the Holocene range, and thus it is a climate that the natural world and civilization are adapted to. In contrast, global temperature in at least the past two decades is probably outside the Holocene range (7), as evidenced by the fact that the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are both losing mass rapidly (8, 9) and sea level has been rising at a rate [3 m∕millennium, (10); updates available at http://sealevel.colorado.edu/%5D well above the average rate during the past several thousand years. Fourth, we have used this base period in scores of publications for both observational and model analyses, so it is the best period for comparisons with prior work.”

I would recommend, incidentally, taking a gander yourself at, say, drought indices over the 20th century (here, for example: http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/jhm-386.1), as well as the times during which heat records were set (readily available on Wikipedia); I think you’ll find that in the former case, drought has been steadily increasing during this century, and in the latter there have been far more high temperature records set in the 2000s than is, statistically speaking, likely.

I think the analysis is a very good way of visualising variations in climate it would be very interesting to see the rest of the story Hansen does not want to tell us.

All he shows here is that there was a warming in the recorded temps over that period. I don’t think anyone disagrees with that (Watts et al 2012 notwithstanding).

What they do not point out is that before 1980 the gaussian profile actually _cools_ a bit before rising later. This is climate varation. The broadening they note is a significant change in climate patterns so what does it mean? Do computer models show similar changes ?

How hard would it be for someone to run this same analysis back to 1900 ? How about looking a winter temps? Southern Hemisphere?

Though Hansen has his usual activist cherry picking presentation this approach is probably more reliable than the often criticised “global mean temperature”.

This should not be dismissed out of hand , it just needs doing for the full range of available data to get the full story.

“Global maps of temperature anomalies show that heat waves in Texas, Oklahoma and Mexico in 2011, and in the Middle East, Western Asia and Eastern Europe in 2010 fall into the new “extremely hot” category.”

Britain this summer falls into the “fairly cold and wet” category. I’d rather be where I could pick cherries like Jimbo.

3. The period from 2000-present has no statistically significant warming. Leaving that period out (of the bell curve animation) biases the presentation.

No. Actually the legend labelling this as 1955-1999 is misleading. The last frame of the bell amin. shows data 2001-2011. Replaying the anim. does indeed show no noticable progression in the bell centre line over the last ten years worth of ten year groupings. ie data from 1991-2001 to 2001-2011

What need to be done here is actually fit the gaussian at each step , find its mean and std deviation (sigma) and plot how that varies over time.

That would be a good demonstration of how little warming there has been recently.

This does seem to be a shift in policy by Mann et al. Rather than predict terror in the future, prove we’re already suffering now. You can see the attraction: no need to use those flaky models, just rely on people’s perceived recent experiences.

Already I hear people saying how the weather is “weird” now, that it’s hotter/wetter/colder/you name it. The tactic is working because people remember the odd days and forget the normal ones.

So I guess we’ll see more of this. If it requires a dependence on ignoring half the world, leaving out the last 10 years and using distorted temperature records then so be it. The end justifies all possible means for these people.

I’m not quite sure what your point is. I suppose it depends upon what we are implicitly assuming all these temperatures mean.

Are we assuming that changes in global mean temp is some measure of global heat content. For land probably not. Land temps do relate to what we live in and how frosts etc affect crops that we need to eat and livestock.

Minimum daily temperature would seem to be an important parameter irrespective of whether it depends on early morning cloud. If it freezes crops still fail irrespective of just why.

This is why I think looking at the distribution as is done here is more informative. I’d like to do the same thing for winter if they’d only fix the broken link to their dicey data.

Drought and heat are not the same thing. Hansen claims the current drought is caused by climate change. The IPCC says droughts have become less frequent in the US. (Quoted by Roger Pielke Jr here: http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.no/)

Heat and wildfires are also not the same thing. Here in Norway (not the hottest country on earth) we had forest fire warnings before Easter last year.

In﻿ the computer code in Climategate you had the “fudge factor”. Welcome to the “smudge factor”. By having a 10-year average it eliminates any signal in the data smaller than 10 years, hence conveniently erasing the last 10 years or so of flatlining temperature. The smudge factor works in conjunction with choosing your starting and ending points carefully — to show the trend you want. For example, if you considered the period starting from 1930’s and went to 1970’s it could be a different result

Giant cherry picking excercise? I must say, Anthony, you must have some balls to say that… Excluding Antarctica, just how much of the Earth’s land surface is actually in the southern hemisphere? How does the answer compare with the proportion of stations in urban locations?

And in any case, none of your alternative hypotheses can possibly explain the steady shift decade-after-decade (i.e. observed reality not model prediction) that has now resulted in extremely hot weather events (i.e. greater than +3 StdDev relative to baseline) being 50 to 100 times more prevalent in the northern hemisphere – because your alternative explanations are either random or cyclical – end of story.

Dr. Hoerling has published research suggesting that the 2010 Russian heat wave was largely a consequence of natural climate variability, and a forthcoming study he carried out on the Texas drought of 2011 also says natural factors were the main cause.

Dr. Hoerling contended that Dr. Hansen’s new paper confuses drought, caused primarily by a lack of rainfall, with heat waves.

“This isn’t a serious science paper,” Dr. Hoerling said. “It’s mainly about perception, as indicated by the paper’s title. Perception is not a science.”

Just for grins, I went over the Hadley Centre and downloaded the entire Central England temperature series — the one that’s uninterrupted from 1659 to the present. The Hadley has a chart up showing the anomaly compared to the 1961-1990 average, and it shows lots of negative anomalies up until the 1930s, then a mix, then a big positive bump from 1980 on.

My first thought is “Why limit the average to 1961-1990?” Oh, I know thirty years is some kind of magic climatical number, but lies, damn lies, statistics, etc. So I loaded the annual averages, rounded to the nearest single decimal point — HadCrut had two significant digits, on a dataset that had to have a measurement error of at least 0.5C — and worked out the anomaly compared to the entire 353-year record.

That modified the chart quite a bit. it put a LOT more negative anomalies all along the chart, instead of piling them all at the beginning. There is a lot more balance all along the series. There is still a pile of positives starting at the last 30 years or so — has the station been analyzed for siting issues? — but to me the significant feature is that none of the recent anomalies are significantly higher than any that have come before. In other words, it hasn’t gotten warmer, it just hasn’t been as cold as in the past.

That may be considered a global warming signal to some, but to me it just looks like the cold extremes has mostly gone away while they kept the nice warmth that was completely common before. If that’s AGW, I don’t see a problem with it.

The latter also fits such as a 1975 Newsweek article pre-dating Hansen’s data fudging, showing the sheer magnitude of 1940s-1960s cooling:

And it also fits a 1976 National Geographic article’s temperature trend data:

The prior Northern Hemisphere temperature illustration additionally passes verification with what fits sea level rise trends. For example, as Holgate et al. 2007 noted, sea level rise rate was greater in the first half of the 20th century than the second half (which is a mismatch to Hansen’s fudged temperature trend but supportive of the preceding illustration):

“The rate of sea level change was found to be larger in the early part of last century (2.03 ± 0.35 mm/yr 1904–1953), in comparison with the latter part (1.45 ± 0.34 mm/yr 1954–2003).”

(In fact, sea level rise in the late 19th century, part of recovery from the Little Ice Age, had a rate like that in the late 20th century, despite how human emissions increased by a factor of more than 10 over that period, not supporting claims that marginal increase in CO2 must have a large temperature effect by net positive feedback amplification as opposed to the actual negative feedback resulting from rise in water vapor clouds causing shading and extra reflectivity).

For temperature, a real picture of the past few thousand years is shown in the following, different from the ice age graphs people are used to seeing because it is not so zoomed out to million-year scale (which means the lag time of centuries for oceans thousands of meters deep to warm to their depths, for warming to cause CO2 increase afterwards, is not a mere pixel or overlapping line on a graph):

The extreme lack of correlation between CO2 and temperature in the graph above comes from NOAA data, with the original sources being:

Rattus Norvegicus: “Anthony, if you read the paper you wouldn’t look like such a fool.”

I could give a rats tail what the paper says, when the associated P.R. piece is written as to mislead the public as to what the paper says.

Hansen: “We’re asserting that this is causally connected to global warming, and in this paper we present the scientific evidence for that.”

Only in this post-scientific world would an “asserting” of “causally connected” be allowed to stand, let alone be published in J.P. of National Academy of Sciences.

As for N.A.S.A.’s Hansen, I no longer trust N.A.S.A. in that a reputable organization, especially one funded by we Taxpayers, would have at least shuffled a political activist hack to a back room in middle of nowhere. If not terminated him or her; rather than allowing said person to continue to be their face and abuse their past-reputation.

Apologies to team members of Spirit, Opportunity, & Curiosity, but N.A.S.A.’s mismanagement is overshadowing your excellent work.

There has been NO “steady shift decade-after-decade”, thus the point of your Alarmist comment is rejected.
Do yourself and the rest of the humanity a big favor, quit taking political activists hacks’ P.R. and Cohort Review Papers as fact. Do your own research, analyze the historical temperature data, think through the AGW claims, factor in the hypocrisy of claiming 0.01 degree precision based on data that is +/- 2.0 degrees accuracy (insert ‘2XFacePalm’ here) And for blanking sakes ask why have the proponents of AGW had to keep morphing their Alarmism.

As for your concerns about the time period used, Hansen et al defend that choice in their paper:

Yes, indeed they do. Odd that such a choice would need to be “defended”.

“We choose 1951–1980 as the base period for most of our illustrations, for several reasons. First, it was a time of relatively stable global temperature, prior to rapid global warming in recent decades.”

i.e. – We chose the period to minimize the quantified variability, which will exaggerate the quantification of recent extremes.

Second, it is recent enough for older people, especially the “baby boom” generation, to remember.

WTF? What kind of scientific criterion is that? This paper was peer reviewed? If the inclusion of such nonsense in a ‘scientific’ paper doesn’t send chills down your spine …

Third, global temperature in 1951–1980 was within the Holocene range, and thus it is a climate that the natural world and civilization are adapted to.

i.e. – We assumed our conclusion. And look what we found! Surprise!

In contrast, global temperature in at least the past two decades is probably outside the Holocene range (7), as evidenced by the fact that the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are both losing mass rapidly

Sooooooooo … the Vikings didn’t live during the Holocene? Time to ‘adjust’ the history books.

(8, 9) and sea level has been rising at a rate [3 m∕millennium, (10); updates available at http://sealevel.colorado.edu/%5D well above the average rate during the past several thousand years.

WTF? Its on the same trend that started @ 1900, according to their own data. Gratuitous.

Fourth, we have used this base period in scores of publications for both observational and model analyses, so it is the best period for comparisons with prior work.”

Yes Jimmy, when you hit upon a dodgy cherry pick, you are loyal to it.

Given the recent discovery of the PDO, which operates on @ 60 year cycle and which is known to affect land surface temperatures dramaitically, the choice of a base period that is only 30 years long, and which (coincidence, I am sure) just happens to start at the bottom of a PDO cycle, and then is used to interpret the recent peak of same … well that choice is in need of some “defense”, now isn’t it?

Good thing that the memory span of a politically important demographic is such an important climatological factor, huh?

Why do SOME sceptics believe NASA is lying when they say they landed a man on the moon?

Perhaps they should consider the long term effects of allowing a consumate lier within their ranks to be not be held accountable for his actions. If NASA wants people to continue to believe in them, they need to reign this in.

Is Curiosity real, or just a stage show being filmed in a large warehouse in Area 51? ;-)

Let me add my voice to those who find the NASA news release pretty much incoherent. I certainly hope that Hansen and his coathors had nothing to do with the stuff that is posted at the NASA web site. The full article http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/07/30/1205276109.full.pdf looks much better (how could it be worse?). I generally don’t do temperature discussions. It’s a food fight and not much fun. But I would like to see some temperature people comment on the PNAS paper. My take is that Hansen et al might have a point, although I don’t think I’d present it the way they do. Why are they using the mean and sigma for a different time interval that they are looking at? Is that legitimate? Is there some reason not to simply compute sigma for each year and show that it is increasing?

They all show a graph as Fig. 2. (B), using reconstructed temperatures of the past 800,000 years (32). The amplitude pp is about 7 to 8 K.

A fast Fourier analysis shows that connected mode resonances of saw tooth oscillations in the range of 10ky ^-1 to 400 ky^-1 exhibit the terrestrial spectrum. From this it is easy to simulate spectrum with Ehrlich modes:

It seems to me that an oscillator with a fundamental frequency of ~190 ky^-1 and a lot of higher modes loading ~8K more heat to the earth over many ky (20+ ky), needs an oven.

It is the Sun?

Hansen and they all show a graph as Fig. 1. using hadcrut3 temperatures of the past 132 years.

Again an analysis of the temperature frequencies of the past 10 ky, especially of the past 50 years show that solar tide functions, fitted in the strength of the tide pairs respectively, match with the global temperatures. Lower frequency simulations need 6 planets and higher temperature frequencies need 11 planets.

To explain terrestrial global temperatures of the past centuries and decades and years with solar tide functions and the terrestrial global temperatures of the past 1 million years with Ehrlich modes suggests that processes in the solar system caused the climate of the Earth, and there is no place for an idea that little changes of CO2 in the atmosphere is relevant for the dynamics in climate.

I urge everyone here at WUWT to READ THIS.

I think not.

Science is not to find errors in the minds of other people; science is to find real relations between structures in nature. War is easier but no valid method in science.

Droughts are caused by atmospheric pressure systems preventing precipitation from occuring to the extent that drought conditions exist. When pressure systems no longer block precipitation from forming drought conditions end. In order to prove causality, Hansen needs to 1. connect anthropogenic CO2 with atmospheric high pressure system changes and that during these pressure system changes, high temperatures were higher than under similarly strong drought inducing pressure systems of the past. 2. He needs to connect anthropogenic CO2 with preventing the jet stream from clearing out blocking high pressure systems thus extending drought periods beyond the range seen in the past. Otherwise, long periods of extensive persistent high pressure systems that induce drought must be considered to be caused by natural events. In a word, mechanism. Not on temperature itself, but mechanism on atmospheric pressure systems that produce long lived and more frequent blocking highs.

Science is not to find errors in the minds of other people; science is to find real relations between structures in nature. War is easier but no valid method in science.

—

With all due respect, Volker, people here should read the cited PNAS paper because we need to know what these people are thinking, and how it will affect EVERYONE in the years to come. If the CAGW activists are not countered, we will end up with an oppressive government that controls every aspect of our lives – what we can eat, what we can drive, our jobs, our houses, our land, how many children we can have. And it’s already starting – look at the coal industry! Soon there will be a huge glut of lawsuits, and like-minded liberal judges will start the process of outlawing products and services not deemed “environmentally friendly”. This will all come to pass…unless we act,

My guess about high temperature record rates: They are set frequently with new stations as well as old ones that have deteriorated. Record rates set by old, well placed (representative of each and all climate zones and across all long term oscillations), and well maintained sensors need to be compared as the control to current record rates. It is plausible that the recent record rate of high temperature records being set is an artifact. At the very least, these sensor artifacts should be ruled out before touting that an increase in record setting rates is correlated to CO2 only.

Frank K. says:With all due respect, Volker, people here should read the cited PNAS paper because we need to know what these people are thinking, and how it will affect EVERYONE in the years to come. If the CAGW activists are not countered, we will end up with an oppressive government that controls every aspect of our lives – what we can eat, what we can drive, our jobs, our houses, our land, how many children we can have. And it’s already starting – look at the coal industry! Soon there will be a huge glut of lawsuits, and like-minded liberal judges will start the process of outlawing products and services not deemed “environmentally friendly”. This will all come to pass…unless we act,

It will happen with or without CAGW. All that’s happening here is the selection of the form of the Destructor.

With all due respect, Volker, people here should read the cited PNAS paper because we need to know what these people are thinking, and how it will affect EVERYONE in the years to come. If the CAGW activists are not countered, we will end up with an oppressive government that controls every aspect of our lives – what we can eat, what we can drive, our jobs, our houses, our land, how many children we can have. And it’s already starting – look at the coal industry! Soon there will be a huge glut of lawsuits, and like-minded liberal judges will start the process of outlawing products and services not deemed “environmentally friendly”. This will all come to pass…unless we act,

I’m with Frank on this one. The ‘alarmists’ have consistently exhorted us to ‘think of the cheeldren!’

I do, and my greatest fear for future generations is that under the guise of ‘saving the planet’ they will be duped and subsumed into a Serfdom from which they will never be able to escape.

Frankly, Frank, I agree with you.

It’s sinister and we have to react. Thank God for WUWT, Jo Nova, CA, Donna and all the rest I say.

“’We choose 1951–1980 as the base period for most of our illustrations, for several reasons. First, it was a time of relatively stable global temperature, prior to rapid global warming in recent decades.’

i.e. – We chose the period to minimize the quantified variability, which will exaggerate the quantification of recent extremes.”

Not at all; in the paper they also show the effects of using 1981-2010 as their base period, and although the widening of the bell curve is not quite as visible, the shifting of its midpoint (and the increased incidence of extremes of temperature) is still clearly apparent.

“‘Second, it is recent enough for older people, especially the “baby boom” generation, to remember.’

WTF? What kind of scientific criterion is that? This paper was peer reviewed? If the inclusion of such nonsense in a ‘scientific’ paper doesn’t send chills down your spine …”

The focus of the paper is whether or not people nowadays should be able to recognize climate change based solely on their own observations, and the paper is entitled “Perception of Climate Change.” The use of a recent base period is extremely relevant.

“‘Third, global temperature in 1951–1980 was within the Holocene range, and thus it is a climate that the natural world and civilization are adapted to.

i.e. – We assumed our conclusion. And look what we found! Surprise!”

…I’m afraid I don’t quite follow. What conclusion are they assuming? He’s quite correct to note that the temperatures during the period from 1951-1980 are within the Holocene range; surely that’s not controversial. And that climate IS what we’re adapted for, since it’s the only one that humanity has experienced. Would you mind elaborating on this a bit?

“‘In contrast, global temperature in at least the past two decades is probably outside the Holocene range (7), as evidenced by the fact that the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are both losing mass rapidly’

Sooooooooo … the Vikings didn’t live during the Holocene? Time to ‘adjust’ the history books.”

Where Vikings did or did not live in the past is utterly irrelevant. Greenland covers approximately 0.4% of Earth’s surface, which is easily small enough for it to have been, in the past, as warm or even warmer than now without having any real effect on global temperatures. The modern period is unique due to the global nature of the current rapid temperature change, in contrast to the rapid regional and glacially (if you’ll excuse the adverb) slow global changes that occurred in the past.

“‘(8, 9) and sea level has been rising at a rate [3 m∕millennium, (10); updates available at http://sealevel.colorado.edu/%5D well above the average rate during the past several thousand years.’

WTF? Its on the same trend that started @ 1900, according to their own data. Gratuitous.”

“‘Fourth, we have used this base period in scores of publications for both observational and model analyses, so it is the best period for comparisons with prior work.’

Yes Jimmy, when you hit upon a dodgy cherry pick, you are loyal to it.”

You have yet to demonstrate that it IS an example of cherry picking. He has a point that using the same reference period makes comparisons easier, and as he showed in the paper itself, using a different, more variable period (1981-2010) does not dramatically affect the results. The rightward shift of the gaussian is still very much in evidence.

“Given the recent discovery of the PDO, which operates on @ 60 year cycle and which is known to affect land surface temperatures dramaitically, the choice of a base period that is only 30 years long, and which (coincidence, I am sure) just happens to start at the bottom of a PDO cycle, and then is used to interpret the recent peak of same … well that choice is in need of some “defense”, now isn’t it?”

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/biondi2001/biondi2001.html There you go, a reconstruction of the PDO from the mid-1660s to 1991. And here’s another one, for a shorter period of time: http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/ Note how the current state of the oscillation is not terribly unusual, climatologically speaking, while global temperatures…are. Note, also, that according to the PDO index we should have been cooling since ~1985, which fairly obviously is not what has actually happened.

Perhaps nobody noticed that it was all about the Northern hemisphere, as it is precisely stated in the first line… Or do the usual posters of WUWT never read any further than the headline? Talk about cherry picking…

Upon review, you are correct! The paper is actually called “Perception of Climate Change”!

And a fine example of perception management it is!

If you are looking for people stupid enough to accept this as a reasonable explanation for excluding decades of data, and for trumpeting unfounded conclusions to the media, I am certain that you will find them in droves.

But not here. And you reveal yourself for what you are by attempting to do so.

I’m just not seeing how any of these statistical analyses have any ability to express anything except how the entire series differs from a subset of the series. If I take the entire 359-year dataset from HadCrut of the Central England temperature and plot it over time, it has a trend of 0.03C per decade. If I plot the anomalies from the mean of that entire time, there is a bunching up of positive anomalies from 1980 on, but nothing any higher than ever occurred before — just not as many negative anomalies. I think that’s something to be happy about.

I have zero doubt that if Hansen had picked seven different 30-year spans for his baseline he’d have had seven different curves, with the peaks sliding one way or the other.

And the biggest fraud is that NONE of that analysis ties CO2 to the rise in temperatures. It’s a “hide the pea” routine, with the “CO2 caused this rise in temps” hypothesis hidden under the cups of constantly moving statistics. If anything, these analytical exercises should be ignored and the focus returned to “How does this prove that CO2 has anything to do with it?”

We KNOW it’s gotten warmer. We’re NOT SURE how much warmer, because of the poor siting issues. But nothing about getting warmer by itself is evidence that CO2 is causing it. This argument is just another one stolen from the creationists: CO2 is the “God of the gaps.”

Hm. I think we may need to backpedal a bit; we’re obviously just talking past each other at this point. If you don’t mind my asking, what would you expect to see in the chart if a longer interval had been used for the baseline comparison? What would you expect to see if a different interval of the same duration had been used? And why so? I want to establish (appropriately enough) a baseline, so that I know where you’re coming from here.

…And on a completely unrelated note, may I ask how quotes and/or italics are managed on this site? My last post was nigh-unreadable thanks to formatting issues, and I’d rather not subject y’all to that again.

francois: “Perhaps nobody noticed that it was all about the Northern hemisphere, … … posters of WUWT never read any further than the headline?”

All this time we thought ‘it’ was about G-L-O-B-A-L Warming. More specifically, the claim that Carbon from industrialized human’s activities were the sole cause of claimed increase in G-L-O-B-A-L temperatures. To our great relief, we now know ‘it’ was about “Northern hemisphere”, not about Southern hemisphere, not about human activities, and not about Carbon. ;)

Could someone please pass this Epiphany on ‘it’, to the E.P.A. and White House; so we can quit needless closing coal fired power plants and quit wasting billions of Tax dollars on Solyndras? :)

Sam Yates;
Sam Yates says:
August 7, 2012 at 7:05 pm
DavidMHoffer:
Hm. I think we may need to backpedal a bit; we’re obviously just talking past each other at this point. If you don’t mind my asking, what would you expect to see in the chart if a longer interval had been used for the baseline comparison?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

1. PERCEPTION of warming is about as scientific as…. well, to be frank, it is the antithesis of science. Science is about separating fact from perception. Sometimes the two coincide, but until you have the facts, you don’t know that, and frequently perception is wrong.

2. As to what I would EXPECT, I don’t have a clue. Expectation is the root of confirmation bias. Iif the hypothesis is that there are more extreme events due to global warming, then the frequency and intensity of such events in the cooler past would either falsify or support that hypothesis. From the late 20’s to the early 40’s we have anecdotal evidence from all over the world that periods of intense drought and heat waves scorched various parts of the globe. My PERCEPTION based on my reading of the historical record and my PERCEPTION from stories told by elderly relatives of that period of time suggests that these were MUCH worse than what we are experiencing in recent years. But my PERCEPTION is not science. Examining the DATA from that time period is SCIENCE. If in fact my PERCEPTION is correct (as borne out by the data), and that time period was cooler than current times (which according to Hansen it was) then the hypothesis is falsified. If the data doesn’t support my perception, then so be it. But by excluding that important period of time, and focusing on perception of the data rather than the data available, Hansen as left science behind and entered the realm of perception management.

DavidMHoffer: Well said. I agree wholeheartedly with everything you wrote except, perhaps, the last sentence, which I would quibble with for reasons I’ve mentioned earlier (no indication of 1930s/40s being exceptional in the global record, no great alteration in the appearance of a shift in temperatures when a different baseline is used, etc.)

Hottest summer I remember was in 1978. Forty plus days of 100+ temperature where I lived. Haven’t come close to that in 34 years here in Memphis, and I’ve lived here the whole time. This year is warm, but not as bad as that and we have temperatures in the sixties forecast for later this week.

But that is all just weather I suppose, not climate. But it does counteract Hansen’s claim that his base period was memorable as being cooler than currently. It all depends upon what temperature records you are looking at.

Frank K. says:
August 7, 2012 at 10:55 am
Volker Doormann says:
August 7, 2012 at 10:26 am
Frank K. “I urge everyone here at WUWT to READ THIS.”
I think not.
Science is not to find errors in the minds of other people; science is to find real relations between structures in nature. War is easier but no valid method in science.
—
With all due respect, Volker, people here should read the cited PNAS paper because we need to know what these people are thinking, and how it will affect EVERYONE in the years to come. If the CAGW activists are not countered, we will end up with an oppressive government that controls every aspect of our lives – what we can eat, what we can drive, our jobs, our houses, our land, how many children we can have. And it’s already starting – look at the coal industry! Soon there will be a huge glut of lawsuits, and like-minded liberal judges will start the process of outlawing products and services not deemed “environmentally friendly”. This will all come to pass…unless we act,
November…

Hi Frank K.,

I give my greatest respect to people, who are realizing freedom to fight as worrier of truth. History is full of stories (and movies) about brave people all over the world, but also in the U.S.A. Regarding the change in the spirit of the time one can see that the old fashion structures like finance, governments, authorities, parliaments, curt’s of justice, universities, or armies, but also religions and climate science are breaking in piece, because they have failed to respect the dignity of each human essence. You and me and most of all brave simple people of the folk of all countries take the freedom of speech to reinstall the balance of justice in the public affairs.

There is no doubt that therefore is a recognition necessary about what is wrong in reference to that what is right, but the very point is that to know what is wrong one must know what is right. All old fashion breaking structures take all their magic power to hypnotise people in WUWT, peer reviewed fantasy papers or sponsored catastrophic TV channels and blogs and sorry, WUWT is part of this if only the output of people are trumped who are trying to save their chairs, and comments are trumped back noisy.

The simple point is that all presumptive ‘wrong’ depositions must be found by strong arguments, because in the case of an absence of strong arguments there would be no difference between the depositions of authorities like Hansen et al. and your deposition that everyone should read that presumptive wrong depositions.
If everyone is reading all presumed junk science stuff, it leads not autmatically to the truth. OK, WUWT is not a science blog, it is a blog on global warming and climate change with the aim to discuss and trump errors in the thinking of the established Earth climate science community.

My way and my postings include strong arguments in this discussion regarding the claims of Hansen et al. as shown in two graph links above, but you haven’t a word on it and nobody else. Ok its science, but the rules in in the science of philosophy concern also the science of logic and argumentation, depositions like ‘The dog is red’ are no arguments.
However, thank you for your brave words.

My way and my postings include strong arguments in this discussion regarding the claims of Hansen et al. as shown in two graph links above, but you haven’t a word on it and nobody else.

I’m sorry that none of the scientists, nor any of the bloggers that you approached felt any need to respond to your assertions regarding the synodic tide aspect of Pluto and Quaoar in relation to terrestrial climate.
I hope that some day someone of authority will recognize your genius and pay proper respect to your findings..

DavidMHoffer: And from the same article there’s a comment by Andrew Weaver, a climate scientist at the University of Victoria, stating that he finds the results compelling. One comment from this or that researcher is not enough to confirm or invalidate a paper, you know.

Your defense of the indefensible does not speak well of you. Quoting Weaver in support of Hansen is like quoting a parrot. As for not reading the science, as I said in my comment, if the paper linked to has merit, it doesn’t change one by one iota that Hansen’s paper has none. Ignoring decades of data and then trumpeting conclusions about “perception” and offering them up as indicators of anything at all isn’t science, particularly in a field like climate where change takes place over many decades and centuries and separating fact from perception requires looking at all the data at hand precisely to remove perception from the equation.

Hey now, I did just what you asked of me; with that link, I attempted to show that taking the 1930s and 1940s into account does not materially change Hansen’s conclusions, and that therefore his decision not to consider that period of time did not invalidate his results. I agree, it’d be nice to have a longer span of time for the comparison. I disagree, though, that Hansen’s basic point–a slight increase in temperature yields a dramatic increase in temperature extremes–is invalidated. To back up this position, after you stated “Until you do the same analysis on the data from the 30/40′s that Hansen did on the data he did use, that is just your perception,” I gave you an example of prior work that makes a similar comparison between data that encompasses the 1930s-1940s with modern temperatures and late mid century temperatures, showing both a similar rapid warming today and a similar dramatic increase in temperature extremes relative to the past century.

[SNIP: Please check site policy here. And you don’t get to decide what is illogical and then present it here to disparage commenters. The antics of Anderegg and Doran are not welcome here. Whining about “cenbsorship” won’t do you any good either. -REP]

Sam Yates says:
August 8, 2012 at 8:49 am
Hey now, I did just what you asked of me; with that link, I attempted to show that taking the 1930s and 1940s into account does not materially change Hansen’s conclusions
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I did a skim of your prescious paper. It is focused on daily indices and the trends of these as an indicator to warming. So what? We’ve been warming since the LIA, and there is nothing in this paper to show that the last century is any different than the previous three. As for your figure 8, you might want to note that the cold nights/ warm nights is done with just 202 weather stations and the cold days/warm days just 169. Further, the plots are of ” the percentage of time during the year when the indicators were below the 10th percentile or above the
90th percentile.” and at a PEAK of 0.10% hardly justify any conclusions regarding anything but a minor change, which, as I already pointed out, is commensurate with the warming we’ve seen for the last several centuries.

This paper has NOTHING to do with the claims being made in Hansen’s paper. That you point me to it suggests that either you don’t understand the content of either, or you were bluffing in the first place, hoping that I would either not read it or not understand it.

Second attempt at comment (first having mysteriously failed to appear).

[Moderator’s Note: You keep complaining about this. Your posts are not being “disappeared”. Maybe you need to check your connection. -REP]

With the greatest of respect, Anthony, Hansen has cherry-picked nothing. Excluding Antarctica, what percentage of the Earth’s land surface is in the southern hemisphere; and how does this compare to the 2% of the contiguous USA (or the global % of sites in urban locations)…?

As for the word “perception” in the title of Hansen et al (2012), this is used in place of “attribution”. The paper was not about psychology; it was about statistics – the statistical analysis of historical facts. Similar, in fact, to James McCarthy’s comprehensive rebuttal of everything John Christy said in the E&PW Senate Committee Hearing last Wednesday.

Opening statements of Sen. Boxer and Sen. Inhoffe and written testimony of all Witnesses:

Rob Dekker says:
August 8, 2012 at 3:33 am
Volker,
My way and my postings include strong arguments in this discussion regarding the claims of Hansen et al. as shown in two graph links above, but you haven’t a word on it and nobody else.
–
I’m sorry that none of the scientists, nor any of the bloggers that you approached felt any need to respond to your assertions regarding the synodic tide aspect of Pluto and Quaoar in relation to terrestrial climate.
I hope that some day someone of authority will recognize your genius and pay proper respect to your findings..

Hi Rob,

Thank you for your kind words to my findings. As my (above links to the) graphs show, there is an (astronomical) method available that is able to simulate the terrestrial climate temperatures in general and good fidelity. Although the physical mechanism is unknown, the comparison’s to hadcrut3 or other (UAH) temperatures shows, because of the heliocentric synodic tide functions that the global Earth temperature anomalies cannot have a terrestrial cause.

This point refutes the claim of Hansen & Co: „Global warming due to human-made gases, mainly CO2 , is already 0.8°C and deleterious climate impacts are growing worldwide.”

Maybe it takes some years for the authorities to accept new insights. Today in 2012 there is another prove of communication with Mars. “In 1893 the Royal Academy of Sciences were convinced by Ball that communication with Mars was a physical impossibility, … ‘no electrical signalling to Mars appears to me to be possible, for the simple reason that the apparatus would have to be sixteen million times more efficient as that which would suffice to do for wireless telegraphy’ …”

The first is a the choice of names for the “warming” categories. From Figure 5:

Area covered by temperature anomalies in the categories defined as hot ð> 0.43σ), very hot (>2σ), and extremely hot (>3σ), with analogous divisions for cold anomalies. Anomalies are relative to 1951–1980 base period, with σ also from 1951–1980 data.

It needs to be stressed that in the paper, these categories are actually defined as the difference of the observation from the mean temperature for that local region during the 1951 to 1980 time period and not relative to an absolute measure. A region that was very cold will contribute “extremely hot” anomalies as the temperature warms even slightly despite that the fact that the actual warmer than usual temperatures could not reasonably be described as “hot” in any fashion.

The use of “extremely hot” however serves the propaganda purpose very well when the authors mention the relatively fewer localities where extra warming could be a problem. By mixing all of the locations together, they create a false view of exactly how prevalent the existence of genuinely extremely hot conditions might be.

The second is a more technical question. If one were examining extremes, why would you choose to use the mean rather than the more informative maximum temperature?

The mean temperature is affected by the possible changes in both the maximum AND the minimum temperatures. If the maximum were to stay the same and the minimum increase, the average would also increase. To describe this as a “more extreme” situation would be a misnomer.

The maximum temperature would be more variable than the mean so that using the Hansen metric would very likely not produce as dramatic effect. However, one would expect that such a consideration would not prevent its use in a scientific paper. Interestingly, I could not locate any data of max and mins on the GISS web site.

Just for fun, I went to the Climate Explorer website and had the site calculate the mean difference between the CRU 3.10 summer max and min temperature anomalies relative to 1951 to 1980 for the northern hemisphere. The result is interesting:

The difference max – min is relatively constant from 1901 to the late 1970s at which point to drops dramatically. The change basically stabilizes at a new level from that time point. The effect of this was to add a substantial contribution from the minimum temps to the overall increase of “extreme temps”. I wonder if Mr. Hansen et al were aware of this…

Dear Moderators: Point noted (although I would dispute your assertion that I keep doing this). Please feel free to delete the first sentence of my previous comment, your response, and this (none of which need appear). Thanks in anticipation of your co-operation, Martin.

[REPLY: Martin, sorry, I didn’t mean to be abrupt or accusatory. You are not the only one recently reporting comments disappearing. The other commenter I’m thinking of is posting from half a world away from you so it can’t be easily written off as an ISP issue. If anyone else finds themselves having to repost a comment, please make a notation at the bottom of the comment, but please give it enough time to be retrieved from the spam folder if that is indeed where it went. I’m not sure there is anything we can do, but I’ll try and check out similar complaints and see if there is some kind of pattern. Please be assured that we will tell you if a comment over-steps bounds. It is only in cases where someone starts thread-bombing and ignores cease-and-desist requests that we just trash comments. So, if anyone else is experiencing difficulty, just make a note in your comment, I’ll check it out, and if there is some kind of pattern I’ll notify Anthony. Fair? -REP]

DavidMHoffer: I think you skimmed a bit too quickly. Those are probability distribution graphs, and hence the TOTAL incidence of all temperatures is normalized to 1; consequently, the y-axis values are not percentage values. 0.1 on the y-axis does not represent 0.1%, it represents 10%. It’s the x-axis that’s percentage, and the bell curve in those graphs show that very few of the temperatures fall EXACTLY at the average value, most are a bit higher or lower, and a very few are FAR higher and FAR lower–precisely as you would expect, considering how much temperatures fluctuate on the short term. The location of the peaks, furthermore, is not really the main point of interest; all that that shows is that average temperatures have been sidling slightly upwards. The reason I brought the graphs to your attention is that you can see clearly that as average temperatures increase slightly, due to the shape of the bell curve extreme temperatures (that is, temperatures that were rare to nonexistent in the previous timespans) increase dramatically–and you can also see that the addition of the period 1900-1950 does not render the last thirty years any less remarkable.

I acknowledge that it would be nice if more stations were used, but then more stations are always to be wished for, and considering that the stations in question are globally distributed, and thus wouldn’t share the same micro or meso-climate, there’s no obvious reason why they would be untrustworthy.

I’m sorry that you think our conversation has been a waste of time, by the by; I’ve enjoyed it, myself, and come across some information that I otherwise wouldn’t have stumbled across. If it’s so very noisome to you, though, I’m willing to let the matter rest–although, of course, I’d prefer to keep it up, because as I said I’ve been enjoying this so far.

Martin Lack;
There are a lot of key words that send your comment to the spam folder. 95% of the time that is the issue. When the comment just “disappears” after you click “post comment” that is invariablity where it went. My practice is to just post another comment that says “mods ~ one down the hidey hole, please rescue?” or something like that. Either the post shows up in short order or you get a note from the mods (rarely) that they cannot find it.

I second the information and advice to you from davidmhoffer. His experience which he reports is the same as my own.

I write to add to points.

I have found moderator REP to be very fair. He was always right on the occasions when he has ‘snipped’ me. And I know of no occasion when any of the WUWT moderators has ‘disappeared’ my posts, but several of the moderators have ‘found’ posts of mine which had vanished into the ‘bin’

Especially problematic words which cause posts to vanish in the ‘bin’ are (trying to nos-spell but leave intelligible for obvious reason)
fr@ud
denyar
natsi
Hittller
a wide range of obscenities many of which are very mild.

DavidMHoffer: I’ve seen it, but I’m puzzled as to why it only dealt with the US; that’s less than 2% of the Earth’s surface, after all, and when the entire globe is examined, a somewhat different picture emerges. I’d particularly direct your attention to figures 6 and 7: http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/jhm-386.1

Clearly, the US is not the best test case when it comes to figuring out what the globe is doing, drought-wise. I don’t know how important this is or if there are other effects, of course, but I would guess that part of the reason that the US doesn’t show the same relationship between the two that the world does is because drought in the US is often associated with La Nina years, which tend to starve the Midwest of water while still being fairly cool. I would guess that, in the US at least, unusually warm years are associated with drought due to the increased evaporation from the soil, while La Nina years (which are also going to be unusually cold) are associated with drought due to the air and water circulation patterns in our neck of the woods. I do NOT insist on that, mind; it’s just speculation on my part, and there might be a completely different reason why the US shows no correlation between temperature and PDSI, while the globe does.

Sam Yates says:
August 8, 2012 at 3:07 pm
DavidMHoffer: I’ve seen it, but I’m puzzled as to why it only dealt with the US; that’s less than 2% of the Earth’s surface, after all
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

chortle. lol. snicker.

So… you’re complaining that it only dealt with 2% of the earth surface? What % of the earth’s surface do the approximately 200 weather stations in the paper you cited represent? You can’t have it both ways!

2% all crammed together, and therefore under similar climatic effects, overall. The stations from the paper I mentioned earlier are scattered all over the globe, and consequently are not exposed to the same climatic effects and can be expected to more accurately represent global trends. If you want to figure out the average temperature of an object, you don’t cram a few hundred thermometers in one part of it and assume that the rest follows that behavior (unless you have an excellent reason for believing that that one section is representative of the rest); you take measurements from all over, so that any local variations are averaged out.

Sorry, but you are just rationalizing. Several commenters have responded with similar analysis from the CET and other temperature records from all over the world. Further to your point, the broader the sample the better, and that goes for spatial distribution as well as temporal. There is no excuse for a study of this sort excluding decades of data on a flimsy excuse, nor can you cite papers that are on a superficial level similar to fill in the gap. Either Hansen applies his methgodology to all the data at hand, or he must provide a credible reason not to, and he hasn’t.

Hm. When you say I’m rationalizing, are you disagreeing with my statement that a global record is more useful for determining global drought trends and correlations than a local (US) record, or are you just referring to my views on the validity of Handen’s paper? If the latter, again, his stated reasons are related to the ability of people nowadays to perceive the effects of climate change. His purpose is not to show that the temperatures today are hotter than they’ve been for a thousand years, or two thousand years, or however many millenia you might wish; they’re to show a perceptible increase in temperature relative to what people can remember, and to demonstrate that the dramatic temperature excursions like the 2003 heat wave in Europe, Australia’s millenial drought, etc. can be credibly linked to the slight increase in average temperatures that has occurred over the Earth’s surface. It seems to me, and I grant I could be wrong, that you’re blaming him for failing at a task he never attempted.

As to the CET record–well, it’s valuable, no doubt about that, but it’s LOCAL. Just as the US is local. It, by itself, says effectively nothing about global climate and the occurrence of extremes.

The posts of Sam Yates here and that of Eric Grimsrud on the ‘Inhofe thread’ are similar. Indeed, Perlwitz recently tried to adopt the method in an Open thread.

The technique is clear;
(a) make an untrue assertion
(b) ignore or misquote any rebuttals
(c) snow the thread with additional untrue assertions
(d) throw insults and ad homs. at those who rebut the untrue assertions.

I am wondering if a new directive has been circulated from the Al Gore propaganda school.

Hansen (and colleagues) writes about the “tails” – contain extremes.
There is no, however, in his references: Ruff and Neelin (2012), Long tails in regional surface temperature probability distributions with implications for extremes under global warming (http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2012/2011GL050610.shtml) with interesting conclusion: “Surface temperature distributions with long tails have a much smaller change in threshold exceedances (smaller increases for high-side and smaller decreases for low-side exceedances relative to exceedances in current climate) under a given warming than do near-Gaussian distributions. This implies that models used to estimate changes in extreme event occurrences due to global warming should be verified regionally for accuracy of simulations of probability distribution tails.”

Hansen (and coauthors) writes: “We calculate seasonal-mean temperature anomalies relative to average temperature in the base period 1951-1980. This is an appropriate base period because global temperature was relatively stable…”

Should be (again) recalled: years 1951-1980 – this is only the negative phase of PDO (currently it is positive), it was “a passage” from positive to negative phase of the AMO (1981 – minimum) – at present is “the reverse”. Oscillations of the NAO and AO (such as ENSO) – were also other phases (than today). The differences for “oscillatory conditions” for 1951 to 1980 – present period – are obvious.

Nielsen-Gammon writes about it (http://blog.chron.com/climateabyss/2011/09/texas-drought-and-global-warming/) so: “So at present, both the PDO and AMO are properly configured to produce droughts in Texas, and this fact explains the current cluster of droughts.” “…Texas would probably have broken the all-time record for summer temperatures this year even without global warming.”

Dr. Hansen: “For example, an unusual atmospheric “blocking” situation resulted in a long-lived high pressure anomaly in the Moscow region in 2010, and a strong La Niña in 2011 may have contributed to the heat and drought situation in the southern United States and Mexico. However, such meteorological patterns are not new and thus as an “explanation” fail to account for the huge increase in the area covered by extreme positive temperature anomalies.”

“… 6,000 years ago and the last interglacial period 125,000 years ago. Both periods are thought to be warmer than the present-day climate.”
“So in both seasons, the detectable segment of the pole-to-equator temperature difference was smaller than at present, and at high latitudes the seasons were less dramatic than at present.”
“What could cause such a thing? The answer probably lies either in the position and latitudes of the jet stream (Davis’s idea) …”

NASA in „The Impact of Climate Change on Natural Disasters” (http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/RisingCost/rising_cost5.php), – about “equable climate problem”: “As a result, global warming may cause the temperature difference between the poles and the equator to decrease. and as the difference decreases, so should the number of storms, says George Tselioudis, a research scientist at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and Columbia University.” “If we are creating an atmosphere more loaded with humidity, any storm that does develop has greater potential to develop into an intense storm,” says Tselioudis.”
However …: “We designed the computer simulations to show that as the ocean temperature increased, hurricanes would form more rapidly and easily, even in the presence of wind shear,” says Nolan, associate professor of Meteorology at the Rosenstiel School. “Instead, we got exactly the opposite result. As the water temperature increased, the effectiveness of the wind shear in suppressing hurricane formation actually became greater.” (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080812160615.htm)

The physicist Wolfgang Pauli was known for his often less than polite criticism of the work of some of his colleagues. He would sometimes exclaim “wrong” (falsch) or “completely wrong” (ganz falsch) when he disagreed with someone. Near the end of his life when asked his opinion of an article by a young physicist, he sadly said “it is not even wrong” (Das ist nicht einmal falsch). The phrase “not even wrong” is a popular one among physicists, and carries two different connotations, both of which Pauli likely had in mind. A theory can be “not even wrong” because it is so incomplete and ill-defined that it can’t be used to make firm predictions whose failure would show it to be wrong. This has also become the situation of “Man Made Global Warming/Climate-Change” theory from its beginnings to the present day. This sort of “not even wrong” is not necessarily a bad thing. Most new theoretical ideas begin in this state, and it can take quite a bit of work before their implications are well enough understood for researchers to be able to tell whether the idea is right or wrong. But there is a second connotation of “not even wrong”: “Something worse than a wrong idea”, and in this form the phrase often gets used as a generic term of abuse. In the case of anthropogenic climate change theory, the way some scientists are abandoning fundamental scientific principals rather that admit a theory is not supported by facts is something of this kind: worse than being wrong is to refuse to admit it when one is wrong. If you “follow the (research) money”, it leads to the political – which equates with power, raw power. By the way: “Cap’n Trade” is only a smiley face mask put on by “Cap’n Tax”. (Think Jack Sparrow and Black Beard, respectively.) You also might wish to read “Unstoppable Global Warming (Every 1,500 Years)” 2nd edition.

P.S.: The major selling point of Hydrogen Powered vehicles is? They only emit water vapor! And where do they operate? On concrete or asphalt covered surfaces, acting as heat sinks that create updrafts that send the vapor skyward into the atmosphere, thereby contributing to a further “Warming” of the planet! (If the alarmists are right, that is.)

WOW! A lot of comments. Hansen has become a statistician and no longer practices good science. I think he should change the orbit of the Earth, its declination, and its wobble. This being done he should handle the sunspot issues, and the solar weather. Having accomplished this he can change the Earth’s cyclical behavior and therby the climate. Even this may no control weather which are daily, weekly, monthly type events. Moreover, Jimbo. stop giving us the concensus argument – science is not based on CONCENSUS. By the way , Jimbo, ever hear of historical geology – try the 1st year course.
I invite you to read my blog: http://energycrisis12.blogspot.com. My e-book – The Sky Will NOT Fall – Unmasking the Green Revolution – Amazon, Barnes & Noble. Forthcoming e-book – soon to be puiblished – Beyond Our Control – Debunking Manmade Global Warming.

“The technique is clear;
(a) make an untrue assertion
(b) ignore or misquote any rebuttals […]”

That is unfortunately drastically eased by currently WUWT not having coding to allow images to be shown in comments, an aspect which would be best to change. Usually, on any site, only several percent or less of readers will click on a link, but the argumentative tactic of being able to count on such collapses in event of images being harder to scroll past without seeing. Such as my prior post ends up at an order of magnitude less effectiveness because of critical images not being blatant.

For the Northern Hemisphere average, for 5 year means, the CAGW movement basically claims that there was only around 0.1 to 0.2 degrees Celsius temperature decline 1940s-1970s, followed by around 0.6 degrees warming 1980s-2000s. However, without their fudging of past temperature data, including skewing by adjustments predominately in the opposite direction of proper correction for UHI, the actual picture for such NH several-year averages is closer to around 0.3 degrees Celsius temperature decline 1940s-1970s, followed by around 0.3 to at most 0.4 degrees temperature rise 1980s-2000s, with the latter mainly just taking temperatures back to near the levels of the late 1930s.

Any net warming of the Northern Hemisphere mean in the 1990s-2000s compared to the 1930s drops to the level of hundredths of degrees at most, not even tenths of a degree. So much for grand global warming. (There was more major net global warming before the end of the 1930s, but the 19th century and the early 20th century were part of recovery from the Little Ice Age, while human emissions were many times less then than a century later, not supporting human effects being dominant).

I am amazed that Martin Lack would complain about the moderator on Watts Up With That. I had first encountered him while engaging in a debate on Climate Denial Crock of the Week with Peter Sinclair
“Duluth Storm: Yet Another Postcard from the Future”
June 25, 2012

Not at all; in the paper they also show the effects of using 1981-2010 as their base period, and although the widening of the bell curve is not quite as visible, the shifting of its midpoint (and the increased incidence of extremes of temperature) is still clearly apparent.

The point is, they didn’t show the effect of properly quantifying the variability of the temp record over a climatologically appropriate period. The years following 1980 are important to that – the fifty before 1950 much more so. As Pat points out, they are not operating from a quantified theory of natural climate variability. They are intentionally restricting the assessment of variability to a period that they admit they chose because it does not vary. The technical term for this is “chutzpah”. It’s the kind of thing you do when you don’t have to worry about peer review, which these PNAS vanity papers are not subject to.

The focus of the paper is whether or not people nowadays should be able to recognize climate change based solely on their own observations, and the paper is entitled “Perception of Climate Change.”

Absolute nonsense.

Obviously, individuals cannot directly perceive the global temperature field. That is why we create monitoring networks, spend billions lofting weather satellites, and subject the data from those billions of sensor readings to all manner of descriptive statistical analyses and ‘adjustments’ – legitimate or otherwise.

The focus of this ‘paper’ is not an assessment of perception or any other science. It is a propaganda piece, whose focus is manipulating that perception thru the deception of convincing people that they :should be able to directly perceive the global temperature field, and they should feel stupid to admit that they cannot. The principle involved is not a question of science, it is “The Emperor’s New Clothes” being acted out for political effect.

I’m afraid I don’t quite follow. What conclusion are they assuming? He’s quite correct to note that the temperatures during the period from 1951-1980 are within the Holocene range; surely that’s not controversial. And that climate IS what we’re adapted for, since it’s the only one that humanity has experienced. Would you mind elaborating on this a bit?

Accompanied by the following assertion that the last 20 years are not consistent with the Holocene. Assumes the conclusion that he is trying to get people to “perceive”. That is how propaganda works.

Where Vikings did or did not live in the past is utterly irrelevant.

Uh, no it is not. The claim is that ice melt demonstrates that the temps of the last 20 years are out of bounds for thousands and thousands of years. But that ice melt is currently exposing previously buried Viking settlements, demonstrating that around one of those thousands of years ago, there was much more ice than during his ‘base period’.

Greenland covers approximately 0.4% of Earth’s surface, which is easily small enough for it to have been, in the past, as warm or even warmer than now without having any real effect on global temperatures. The modern period is unique due to the global nature of the current rapid temperature change, in contrast to the rapid regional and glacially (if you’ll excuse the adverb) slow global changes that occurred in the past.

LOL OK, that is another good reason why Hansen’s appeal to Greenland ice melt as proof of ‘global warming’ is illegitimate. Got any more?

He has a point that using the same reference period makes comparisons easier, and as he showed in the paper itself, using a different, more variable period (1981-2010) does not dramatically affect the results.

Not shown in the paper: the much more variable period 1900-2010. Properly quantifying the natural variability of the climate system to pull out from that the ‘global warming’ that he wants to convince people they are seeing would necessarily entail longer periods than 30 years (look again at PDO, AMO, etc for their periodicity, and consider the effects of that on quantification of variance and presentations of “extreme” values). It would also entail including the warm 1930’s AND detrending to remove the natural trend clearly evident pre 1950, and they do NOT want to do that.

This ‘paper’ of Hansen’s is a propaganda piece. Period. It is nothing more than an elaborate version of NCDC’s shoddy ‘probability’ talking point released a couple of weeks ago. Conflates ‘warm’ with ‘warming’. Equivocates on the term ‘global warming’ between natural and (alleged) anthropogenic sources. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Half the time, these clowns are doing “science by press release” and the rest is “press release by scientific paper”. We need to fire the propagandists and replace them with actual scientists.

JJ says:
August 10, 2012 at 7:30 am
,,,
Half the time, these clowns are doing “science by press release” and the rest is “press release by scientific paper”. We need to fire the propagandists and replace them with actual scientists.

I will spare you the full script of the little skit of the conversation between the Physicist and Climatologist–but briefly, after a brief exposition of the nature of energy flows, the Physicist responds to each of the theories and projections and examples of the climatologist with “See the above”. Until the final objection, in which the climatologist cites the hundreds of billions of dollars available for (pro-)AGW research. The Physicist, realizing he need only play the game to get his funding dreams fulfilled, now offers, under the new rubric of Climatologist #2, to explain to the reader why AGW is important and excellent science.